My Sunshine
by Aiko Isari
Summary: (PokeSpe) Giovanni has nothing left. Then he finds a young orphan girl. AU.
1. 1

_Notes: Adult fear, loss of child, kidnapping_

* * *

1.

The title of Gym Leader was worthless.

It contained power, yes that was certain, but it did not have the ability to save people. Not the close people, not the ones who mattered.

Giovanni had felt powerless often. Oak had been young when he had become a champion, young enough for Giovanni to idolize him on just growing television screens, young enough to see him go to war and wage it, and watch his mother burn like he wasn't fighting. The War against Orre was a proper noun to anyone his age. He had grown up chasing after power.

And just when he'd obtained it, when he had obtained everything you were supposed to want and need to survive and thrive, it all fell apart.

He woke up to broken windows and a horrible shrieking sound, full of impatience. He woke up to his son's terrified shrieks snapping to silence.

And Giovanni hated as he never had before.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** _And one more fic for now! I'm currently in the process of figuring out how Yellow Adoption ends, hence it's lack of updates. In the meantime, enjoy this one off short story!


	2. 2

2.

The only thing that kept him at his post was the check. The check, the prestige, the need. The good publicity. Nobody would believe it was him if anything was found out, so long as he was careful.

The problem remained that he didn't want to be careful. Giovanni wanted to rage. To bubble up and destroy everything that he had created. But it wouldn't satisfy him. It would only be an aggravation of his soul, to be dramatic.

Besides, the city did not deserve his wrath for continuing to exist. And they had suffered too.

Now if only the League would come when it was called like a rockruff to a clicker toy.

Devoting himself to his people was good. It caused him to stop thinking of his son's snapped cut shrieks. It stopped the rage from boiling the blood from his skin.

It did not however, stop him from nearly crashing into the sleeping body of a little girl.


	3. 3

3.

Giovanni had good reflexes, but as he was now intimately aware of, he took poorly to surprises. As such, he made himself tamp down the urge to kick the child and jerk away. But the little girl did not move a muscle. Perhaps she expected him to. Then she picked herself up as if he wasn't there. She yawned, rubbing her eyes.

Sun-yellow eyes looked back at him. "Sowwy..."

Giovanni was too taken aback to properly scold the little thing. She looked barely older than his son. "What were you doing out here?" he asked.

She blinked at him and then shivered. Perhaps she didn't know, herself. Giovanni looked around for any passing adults. No one looked, too busy with their own, with the most necessary of operations. She only blinked again. She must have forgotten how to cry.

Poor creature.

A moment more of hesitation, and he released Kangashkan. Her disappointment lasted just long enough for her to see the little girl and scoop her up close.


	4. 4

4.

Her name is Yellow, apparently, pronounced "yewwow". Her words are slow, due to the bruising on her lower lip. Swollen likely from a trip and fall. Giovanni has plenty of supplies left over and he's alone. He knows how to cook.

She smiled at him, freshly free of teething and with a toddler's youth.

"Where are your parents?"

"Dunno." Her voice is sleepy. Perhaps he shouldn't ask. He had more pressing matters, like what to do with the brat. Toddler. She made little sounds as he cooked, so much like Silver and Sneasel that it hurt every chamber of his heart. "It was hot."

He coughed. It wasn't red. He counted that as a blessing and settled on tasting the soup.


	5. 5

5.

It was a week after living with her that Yellow fell asleep in the middle of nowhere and he saw why.

It was just a caterpie, he had wanted to say. But this was a three year old. This was a little girl and he distinctly remembered his son (throb) wanting to save a sandshrew in the middle of the road. That little thing had bitten him when he had tried and the boy had cried.

Except this girl did more than care for them, they glowed beneath her touch and the green blood-like substance that fills many bugs (or purple in case of the poisonous ones) stops flowing and they get up like nothing had fallen apart at all. The caterpie wiggles in her lap and possibility flows into his mind because he knows this from somewhere but where it's from is just escaping him.)

But he'll find out. There might be more to this magic, more that can be used to find his son. And less that will get him into trouble with the law. Nice as it sounds, well… it's impractical at the best of times.


	6. 6

6.

"Who's Silver?"

It took her a solid six months to ask this question, which is unsurprising. She's quite young, young and not quite as boundlessly curious and muddy as Silver had been. (Was, he was, he was still alive, he had to be.) She's curious enough though, and he had expected the question at some point in her time here.

It doesn't make her saying his name any less… agonizing.

"He's my son. He was kidnapped… right around the time I found you." Giovanni answers as succinctly as possible. He lets the gears turn in the little girl's mind.

"Oh."

And that was that, as they say.


	7. 7

7.

She's intelligent.

It's not Silver's intelligence, per say, where he could point to facts and where they went. But his son was also young. She is smart in an instinctive manner, able to follow what he does rather than what he says to do. She recognizes patterns and reacts to them, learning how pokemon think and feel in a way it took him years to master.

On the flipside though…

"You can't cry when they get hurt." He keeps his voice patient. Giovanni does understand, even outside of a business perspective. It's painful and disturbing to watch and she's barely old enough to carry tea trays let alone send out pokemon in battle and watch them get hurt and quite possibly die. "They will think something is wrong and very likely get distracted."

Yellow wobbles because she understands where that train of thought goes. If they're distracted they could gather much worse wounds. Then it could possibly be too late and then what? Her yellow eyes steel to amber and she nods, sniffling fading away as she calls her next command to the bruised bulbasaur.

Giovanni nods in affirmation. Not pride, not yet. But she will learn. She will obtain.


	8. 8

8.

"Would Silver like me?"

It's such an absurd question that from anyone else aside from him would laugh and walk away. He's dealt with small children however in a limited capacity aside from his own. Gym Leaders offer classes to the younger generations. That's simply what they do, how they act. (He knows it's also a holdover from the war, to keep an educated, armed mass of people. It's a good business.)

"It's possible," he replies instead of laughing. "He's fond of people who are fond of pokemon."

She nods slowly. "I hope so. I hope he doesn't hate me."

"Why would he?" It's a lazy question, a slight distraction from the paperwork at hand.

"I stole his dad from him."

It's a simple statement, yet it keeps him up that night. And the next.


	9. 9

9.

The urge to destroy is fatally present. His crobat croons from his perch every time he even looks at plans. Plans for funds, for resources. The newest gym model that would run newbies into shreds and only leave elites in their wake. True elites who could take the championship by storm, if only for a moment. Trainers, people who could take pokemon and turn them beyond savage monsters and barely tamed beasts, into teams of sheer terror.

If he is going to pursue an opponent who had tamed a Ho-oh, or more frighteningly, Ho-oh himself, he would have to use at least that much power, if not more to save his son.

Time is short. He has to decide.

And despite the little girl sleeping in the next room in the bed his son would have used, Giovanni decides his place.


	10. 10

_warning for death and trauma_

* * *

10.

A golem explodes in Viridian Forest, and, to his own chagrin, it has nothing to do with him.

Unfortunately, in his rush to see the problem, he neglects to tell Yellow to stay behind. So, while he's examining the scene, she sees, and touches, the carcass.

She doesn't sleep. She just screams, over and over until she loses her voice. She had seen something, the final thoughts warped and distorted by the sudden inward and awful demise.

Then she just looks at him. It's not accusatory because really, he hasn't done anything yet. But it's almost like a warning. Because he will, and she knows. Somehow she knows in a way children are simply conscious of things beyond them sometimes. Like they are observing far more than they even comprehend.

So, thinking hard, Giovanni changes course. Just a little.


	11. 11

11.

She is eight.

She's slept properly, kept her hair washed. Her bulbasaur is obedient and gentle with her and throws others across the wall without fear. The caterpie she had oi is now a butterfree. Which understandably terrified the child. Imagine feeling a caterpie – metapod – melt inside its shell. Her power is so useful. Disgusting at times to experience, he imagines, but useful.

"Catch a pokemon." His order is simple.

Yellow in other times would tremble at the way his voice sounds. She is eight and he expects her to act as only a real trainer could act.

But she nods. She is resolute. She goes.

Giovanni shoves the pride away and sets to work on his next project. The project not for her eyes.

Rocket.


	12. 12

12.

Face flushed with victory, she returns to him, a pikachu in her arms. He nods.

"Good." _Excellent_ , he thinks. Half her bag stock is missing, not all of it like a panicked youngster. Half of it is close to and her hands and cheeks were covered in the underbrush and her skin bore marks from flying poison stings. So antidotes and pokeballs most likely. He would inspect it.

The forest has been changing over these past few years. He's avoiding polluting it, that's too obvious, but migration from the rivers, towards Pallet Town, is more and more common. It's amazing what alterartions do to the environment, especially with such simple tweaks over the years. He doesn't need to do very much else.

"Go wash up and rest," he says without a scolding. "We will discuss things tomorrow."

She goes, looking at him very oddly as she does. He doesn't notice, immersed back in his work again.


	13. 13

13.

Yellow finds Mister Giovanni a strange man.

He's the Gym Leader. He's looked after her for years, looked for his son in those same years. He is not an unkind man, but that's about all she can say about him for sure. He is making plans for something, and the world doesn't like whatever it is.

Doesn't he just want to find his son though? Isn't he training her to help?

She brushes her fingers over each pokeball. She has to be careful. Seeing pokemon hurt... her free hand curls into a fist. It's awful. It hurts, it twists and churns and-

Explodes. Explodes like dynamite and rises up her stomach.

Yellow swallows her spit and the bile. It sizzles uncomfortably.

She shakes her head to clear it. He'd had nothing to do with that. Crobat said so. But that didn't mean his presence wasn't a part of it. Still, she can't put a finger on what it is. All he wants to do is help his son.

Surely that was a good thing, right?


	14. 14

14.

She's nearly nine when the dragon comes.

People whisper of him when his great hulking orange beast of a drake lands in the middle of the town. The man riding him drops down with careless ease, orange spikes falling over his eyes and framing them in shadow.

Yellow pauses. She thinks there is something else in them, something cold and nasty. And then it is gone, replaced with blankness as they look at her.

"You," he says flatly. "Where is the Gym Leader?"

Yellow's first instinct is to lie, but something in her doesn't. Something in her raises her hand to point to the Gym at the edge of the trees.

He nods and walks away, his dragonite trailing after him without a look back.

Her fingers ache to touch it, but she goes to the forest instead. Giovanni had asked her to look into something after all. And being there is always nice, always warm.


	15. 15

15.

Chuchu and Freesuke are not enough against a dratini.

Dratini are supposed to be terrified, skittish, hiding little things. But this one is-

"Duck, Venas!" she shouts quickly and the bulbasaur tries to run away.

In another life, she would be attacked and saved. In this life, she is attacking,

"Freesuke, sleep powder!" She is not like Giovanni. Not enough. In his words, she is still too soft. But that's fine. She can be soft if she needs to be.

Yellow is only herself.

She readies the pokeball and throws.


	16. 16

16.

"Nice catch!"

Yellow whirls, Chuchu sparking at her shoulder. An older boy is crossing the small forest clearing, black hair barely controlled under his bright red cap. He's beaming bright, a pokeball in his hands.

"That was really good," he says with that same innocent smile, like the kids she plays with after lessons. "I almost had Saur grab that guy, but that was really smart! Green would have been impressed, the jerk."

Yellow understood almost none of that. "Saur? Green?"

The boy throws the ball and out pops a venasaur. "This guy is Saur. Green is... like a rival I guess." He scratches his head and beams again. "But anyway, I'm glad you caught that dratini. Those weren't here the last time I came through."

Yellow nods. That sickening feeling is back again.


	17. 17

17.

The older boy's name is Red. He smiles a lot. He's very carefree and supportive. He helps her feet the rattata who flee from the larger pokemon invading the forest.

She feels sick, but looking at Red turns nausea into relief. Into ease. He has that kind of strength in him, she thinks.

"I've got almost all the badges I need to challenge the league," he tells her. "Though you don't actually need badges, it just is good training."

Yellow makes to answer, but then her eyes catch a glimpse of something orange shooting into the air, followed by something green.

Dragons go to war overhead.

Without hesitation, Yellow runs.


	18. 18

18.

By the time she get remotely close, Yellow finds Giovanni standing in front of a hole in his gym. He doesn't look particularly upset from the back but that could mean anything at all.

"Sir!" she calls with worry.

He turns and smiles at her. It's that faint, adult smile. It's the one that he uses when he succeeds or when he will succeed. "Yellow," he says warmly. "Good timing, I have need of your help."

"Is that your dragon up there?"

He nods. "It is, but this should be over soon. I need you to concentrate. It's time for you to put your training to the test. You're going to Johto."

Yellow doesn't see Red behind her. She doesn't see the way Giovanni's smile changes. But she feels it in her bones.


	19. 19

19.

Yellow doesn't resist this order. She would have if, of course, she hadn't been given one key detail: _she was going to find Silver._

She was nine now, almost ten. She had four pokemon. She had to survive in some part of Mount Silver and then come down. Then she would have no connection to Giovanni and what he would soon be doing.

Yellow didn't quite understand this part, but it was probably for the best. He had said he was going to do something dangerous.

"You must be able to defeat the cold," he had told her before sending her away.

Thankfully, he hadn't left her alone. But why would she have to defeat the cold?

One thing is for sure, she's not bringing Freesuke.


	20. 20

20.

"A young thing like you?"

The man at the booth is skeptical, and apparently he should be. Mt. Silver has so many warnings that it barely counts as safe for pokemon, let alone an underage girl with pokemon like her.

"It's all right." A smooth voice is followed by a heavy hand landing on her shoulder. "She'll be with me the whole time."

The man freezes like someone turned him into a wooden plank. "Ch-champion, sir. If, if you're certain."

"Absolutely."

Yellow looks up at the dragon man's face. It was the dragon man, the one who had probably attacked Mister Giovanni. And yet he's helping her.

For what?


	21. 21

21.

"Your father's doing horrible things." They're wandering the outskirts, Kieli the Dratini floating ahead of her. It's surprisingly tame for her. Perhaps Mister Giovanni is right and she's too passive for much of a war.

Yellow looks at him wearily. "He's not my father. He's _Silver's_ father." There's an important difference and she knows it. She doesn't know how to explain what she knows.

"He took you in though. Nicest thing someone's ever done for you."

Yellow thinks about it and smiles. She supposes that's the truth. "He is doing bad things though. The forest told me."

"It told me too," he says. He's trying to sound Yellow can tell he isn't being quite as kind as he should be. Or as he probably thinks he is. Red's voice was different. "I went there to stop him."

"You broke his gym," she says. "You shed blood."

"And he'll shed more." Lance watches a ponyta burst from the grasslands. "Are you all right with that, protector of the trees?"

Yellow doesn't know how to answer. So she doesn't. She fumbles for words that make no sense, but Kieli does the rest. Four pokemon again.

Pokemon make sense. Human morals do not.


	22. 22

22.

For some reason, he hasn't killed her yet.

Yellow doesn't know why but it feels like that's what he wants to do more than anything. Like if he does it, he'll feel better about something.

"Why do you want to rescue Silver?"

Yellow blinks. "Why shouldn't i?"

Lance shrugs, watching her groom her new, ponyta, careful of its strange blue flames. "He could be lying to you."

"He didn't start by lying," she says softly, resisting the urge to ball her fists. "He could have given me away much earlier."

"And that justifies what he does to pokemon."

"No." She didn't even _know_ what he did in the first place. "But it doesn't mean he's just evil."

"Humans are evil, Viridian girl." Lance sighs at her for emphasis. "We have to endeavor to be good."


	23. 23

23.

She doesn't like him, but the only reason she's allowed on the Mountain for this long is because he's with her. Thus, Yellow tells him what he may need to know, which isn't much.

"You must be able to defeat the cold," Lance parrots. Then he chuckles. "Sounds familiar. There is a human who is known to make unparalleled cold over in Johto. Even those pokemon strong against ice cannot just walk away unscathed from them, I've heard."

"You've heard?" she repeats.

Lance shrugs. "I have one ice user to constantly go against. Why would i bare my teeth against another?"

"Why would you fight someone when you'll lose?" she translates awkwardly.

Lance laughs outright. The sound is rich and cold. "That's the fun of it. She is a good human."

Yellow wonders, once again in this journey, what the difference is between good and evil. He's never able to explain it.


	24. 24

24.

If pokemon can learn to change and grow, so can humans. That is what evolution is.

This is the conclusion Yellow arrives at, four months after taking her first step onto Mt Silver. Lance has left every now and again, but he comes back quickly enough. Or he leaves a dragon to watch over her. It is wary of course.

But she thinks maybe, just maybe, he cares about her after all. He could have thrown her into the depths of the mountain where the ursaring share a ground, let them fight over her skin and bones, as he threatened to. And yet he does not. He claims there is a spark in her, whatever that means.

He is just like Mister Giovanni. He will pretend he is doing something so incredible and grandiose but really he wants something simple.

Adults just make no sense to her.


	25. 25

25.

She journeys alone, a little further, following her ears, following the sound of water, and comes across a great, beautiful creature with a large horn and snow-white fur. It looks at her, into her eyes. Then it rises.

Venas rises after it, slow ivy saur legs climbing in front of her and preparing its glowing bulb. Chuchu sparks from at the top.

It chuffs at them both, refusing to look away from her. Strangely, she cannot look away either. Eventually, she rolls a pokeball from her hand.

It touches it with its nose.

As she retrieves the now full ball, a whisper says in her ear, you will need me someday.


	26. 26

26.

Giovanni, she realizes, probably wanted her to get tough up here. Her still thin hands and soft face tell her that likely failed.

However, what she lacks in grit, she has figured out how to be smart. She learns the patterns pokemon take when they think they are safe. She has heard the cries of the dying and when to help them. She has learned her body's rhythm changes after a healing.

The forest endures, whispers the mountain. The mountain shatters. The forest defeats.

She barely feels a chill anymore.

She ventures further and suddenly, the world fills with warmth. Warmth and light suffuse the sky, wrapping around her. And yet-

Her body won't go any closer. Fear wraps her tight, and she suddenly feels small and stepped over.

Yellow bites her lip and lifts each foot one at a time until a great, beautiful bird is peeking one eye open at her.

And she is engulfed in burning fire within the next second.

Yellow nearly panics but grabs hold of Nel's pokeball, releasing the ponyta who has already gone off into a stern gallop.

The pure speed Nel pours out sends them flying out of the cave and nearly into Lance.

"Troublemaker," he says wryly as she picks herself up. "I want to show you something."

Yellow resists, but with her team, she can maybe escape.

She hopes.


	27. 27

27.

They fly to a strange island and it takes her the rest of the day to stop shivering like a windblown leaf..

"Welcome to Cerise Island, Yellow," he says with utter disinterest. "I want you to see what I've been doing when I'm not looking after you. There are mysterious things here. Watch your step."

Yellow clenches her hands tight, wishes for Freesuke. But he's not here and she'll have to go on without him.

It'll be fine. She repeats this in her head, where she's almost certain that Lance can't hear it.


	28. 28

28.

This person trains her too. Lance is as ruthless as the mountain she had stayed on. Harsher even because he has limits he ignores. The mountain does not. Lance should care but he does not.

"Your guardian disappeared in a scuffle," he tells her. "With an R on his suit. Rocket. A terrible team who uses pokemon for money."

She wants to not believe him. Unfortunately, she acknowledges that Giovanni will do almost anything for his son and for his own feelings.

"Why?" she says instead, pulling out her fishing rod instead of looking him in the eye.

"You would know that best."

That was true, she would.


	29. 29

29.

A great creature of light falls upon them.

To Yellow, it is sudden and out of nowhere. To the residents, the remaining humans who Lance regards with warmth, it has been a long time coming.

Lance is nowhere to be found.

It doesn't matter to Yellow. She runs up to the light, Chuchu clinging tight to her hair.

In this world, Yellow doesn't know about any schemes or have to save a boy to return his good friend. In this world, Yellow just wants to return a debt that can't be repaid.

Even so, when her eyes land on the great, monstrous bird, Yellow knows, instinctively, that this pokemon needs a guiding hand, like everyone who has taught her.

This time, she does not battle. She speaks, slow and long. Tells the pokemon about the boy Giovanni might have raised, tells them about the forest's anger. She tells them about how sad and lonely she's been at times, how much she loves pokemon. How much she loves and misses home.

And as she speaks these words, Yellow, ten years old and out of her depth, starts to cry.


	30. 30

30.

That night, she sleeps under the monster's light.

When she wakes it is gone. And there is a voice, Luan's voice, soft and clear, in her heart: we must go.

Yellow is not foolish. Her eyes rimmed red, snot dribbling from one nostril, she climbs onto his back and they go. If Lance is watching, she does not know and does not care.


	31. 31

31.

They search and search.

Yellow picks up Freesuke the second they reach a city. She doesn't know why Lua causes people to flinch form her. She does not have a pokedex to tell her that disaster follows her wherever she goes. She already assumes that bad luck has followed her like a ghost type.

Still, Yellow can't help but breathe easier when no one is staring at her.

If only Freesuke could go a little faster.

The problem is, she doesn't know where to start.


	32. 32

32.

Yellow returns to Kanto first. She can ask for help in Pallet. They've missed the league, so it will be easier to talk to people. She has no idea who Giovanni is or what he means to people, but she has ideas. Because Viridian speaks without words. And that... that is everything.

What she doesn't expect to hear after explaining the situation, is such:

"What do you want with my brother?"

The teenager girl looks up from whatever she is doing and her bright blue eyes are full of something else unreadable. Even Red's smile (what is Red _doing here_?) can't tamp on the anxiety that fills her up.

Yellow takes a deep breath and for the second time, tells it all.


End file.
